Set up
Try a plugin
The Design plugin ships with /design-critique already structured to walk screens against a rubric and compare across competitors. If your admin manages plugins and it's not available yet, skip this; nothing below requires it.
Connect your tools
Claude Cowork is more powerful when it works directly with your systems. You control permissions and access. Learn about tool access(opens in new tab).
Navigate to Customize → Connectors in Cowork to set up.
Set your working folder
Drag the files you'll use (competitor flow screenshots, their help-center PDFs, your own current screens, your heuristic rubric) into one folder on your machine, then point Cowork at it. Cowork reads from it and writes the scored teardown back to it. If you do teardowns regularly, create a Cowork project(opens in new tab) from that folder so your rubric and memory stay attached.
The prompt
Copy this into Claude Cowork
Run a heuristic audit of these competitors. Score each screen against Nielsen's ten heuristics plus our three custom ones, note where each competitor is stronger or weaker than us, and end with the three patterns worth stealing and the three to avoid.
Why this works
Score against a named rubric. Ten plus three: comparable scores, not vibes.
Compare against your own baseline. Every finding is measured against your current product.
Ask for a clear recommendation. The teardown becomes a decision, not a report.
Your source files are the evidence. Every score points at a frame in the folder.
Get a better draft
Add an example to match. Drop an example you like into the folder and Cowork matches your structure and voice.
Ask it to flag uncertainty. Add "flag anything you're not confident about" so you know where to look first when you review the draft.
Make Cowork work for you
A plugin skill is a starting point — customize it with your own practices and expertise. A few minutes of conversation and it runs with your standards from then on.
Make what we've done in this task so far into a skill, or edit the /design-critique skill with my feedback.
Make it repeatable
Make it a live artifact
Competitors ship weekly; a static teardown ages fast. Ask Cowork to publish the scorecard as a live artifact and product leadership has one link that stays current — re-run the skill or schedule it to refresh.
Publish that teardown scorecard as a live artifact. Keep a "what changed since last quarter" note at the top.
Run it after every competitor release
A rival ships, the teardown should already be updating. Type /schedule in the prompt, or open Scheduled in the Cowork sidebar, and set the customized skill to run every Monday, picking up any new screenshots dropped in the folder.
/schedule Mondays at 10am, check Competitive/Teardown-Q2 for new screenshots and re-run /design-critique, updating the scorecard and flagging any heuristic where a competitor overtook us.
Each Monday at 10am, checks the teardown folder for new screenshots, re-runs /design-critique, and flags any heuristic where a competitor overtook us.
Share with your teammates
Your customized /design-critique now carries your rubric, your severity scale, and your steal/avoid framing. Share it so every designer and PM scores competitors the same way, and the quarterly review compares like with like.